David Sitondo's Blog

When Zambia’s education minister, Dr. John Phiri announced this year’s results for 2013 Grade 12 examinations, which were generally very poor, he attributed the deplorable performance to the high levels of illiteracy among Grade 12 pupils. He said, ”The general poor 2013 Grade 12 examination results are attributed to the fact that majority of pupils today cannot read with understanding nor write.” The minister further announced that Grant-Aided and Private schools produced better results…

With the Post-2015 Framework focusing on quality in education, it is very clear that the task ahead of all education providers, governments, donors, policy makers and all key stake holders is a mammoth one. While there are still millions of children out of school, it is worth noting that the 2000 Dakar declaration of Education For All yielded a lot of tremendous results with enrollments soaring in most third world countries. A lot of campaigns and programmes yielded very good results in…

When the education authorities in Zambia announced that out of a total of 300,000 children who enroll into Grade 1 only 30,000 reach and complete grade 12, I was startled. This is a startling fact going by those statistics. A quick explanation one would give for such a huge school drop-out rate would be the obvious examinations that exclude all those who do not pass them. Then there is the obvious natural factor of death which could be quite common in

When some teachers in Zambia brought up the issue of mixing children with disabilities with those without, I felt something was not being adequately addressed. An example was given of a teacher who was required to teach a visually challenged pupil who was brought into her class. The teacher definitely found this to be a huge challenge not only to herself, but to the pupil as well. Again this draws me back to the issue I have always talked about at different forums. This issue also hinges…